


That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!

by patchfire, raving_liberal



Category: Glee
Genre: Bad Days, Christmas, Christmas Eve, EVERYTHING GOES WRONG, Everything Is The Worst, Holidays, M/M, Murphy's Law, Somebody Gets Punched, The Author Regrets Nothing, Tumblr: fuckurtadvent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 00:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5517965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patchfire/pseuds/patchfire, https://archiveofourown.org/users/raving_liberal/pseuds/raving_liberal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Silent night, nothing feels right.</p><p>For Fuckurt Advent: Day 24.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!

“Finn! Great! You’re still here,” Will says, walking into the choir room like he’s in a hurry. “I know you were on a flight later today or tomorrow, but I _really_ need a favor.” 

Finn finishes fastening his bag as he answers. “It’s tonight at six.”

Will frowns exaggeratedly. “It’s just, the sheet music. It needs to be completely reorganized before we get back from the break, and the school won’t be unlocked again before that. Neither of us can get in over the break to finish the job, and Emma and I have dinner with her parents tonight. You know how much they don’t approve of me!” 

“Yeah, you mentioned that,” Finn says, slinging his bag over his shoulder. “Can I bring it home with me or something? I could work on it when I get back from D.C., maybe?”

“All of the sheet music’s in the file cabinet. I don’t think it’d travel well. Could you move your flight?” Will asks. 

Finn tries not to grimace or eye the door too obviously. “I can check, I guess?” he offers. 

Will suddenly smiles brightly. “I knew I could count on you, Finn!” He claps Finn’s shoulder. “I really appreciate it. I’ll see you in 2014?”

“Sure,” Finn says, forcing a smile onto his face. He hasn’t exactly rescheduled the flight yet or anything, since Will only just asked him, but Will seems to assume it’s a done deal. “No problem.”

“Merry Christmas!” Will says, stopping by the file cabinet and patting it before leaving the choir room. 

As soon as the door closes behind Will, Finn sighs, his shoulder drooping as he lets his bag drop to the floor. He spends the next twenty minutes on the phone with Southwest getting his flight rescheduled to the following morning, spending an extra sixty dollars to change the date. Then, instead of going home to pack, he spends another four hours sorting, rearranging, and refiling sheet music, as well as hunting down missing pieces of sheet music to sort, rearrange, and then file. At least his flight the next day is early, so he’ll still have plenty of time with his mom and Burt.

The next morning, Finn gets up before the sun is even up, packs up his bag, and drives out to Columbus to catch his flight. He arrives a little earlier than he needs to, so he grabs a coffee and a doughnut from one of the vendors, then goes through security so he can check in at his gate. When he gets to his gate, however, the Southwest employee—whose name tag says “Kimmy”—looks at his ticket, frowning.

“Is there a problem?” Finn asks. “I swear I can fit in a normal seat. I just have to hunch up some.”

“It’s not that, sir,” Kimmy says. “Your flight change shouldn’t have been processed, as this flight is overbooked.” 

“But I can fly on, like, standby or something, right? I mean, I _have_ to get to D.C. or I’m gonna have to drive,” Finn says.

Kimmy keeps frowning and turns to her computer, typing in several things before shaking her head and looking back at Finn. “All of our flights are booked through Christmas,” she says apologetically. 

“But I need to get to D.C.,” Finn insists. “Come on, there’s gotta be something, right? I’ll take a really bad seat, even. I can fly out late if I have to.”

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Hudson, but everyone’s traveling, and with the weather out west, we’ve had to cancel several flights.” 

Finn sighs and nods. “Okay. I appreciate you looking anyway. You have a merry Christmas, Kimmy,” he says, not waiting for a reply before he trudges back towards the front of the airport and the parking deck. As he walks, he calls his mom, putting his phone up to his ear.

“Finn? Did you get checked in for your flight?” Carole says when she answers. 

“Yeah, so there was a problem with that.”

“But you got it all sorted, right?” Carole asks. “If you can’t fly out until tonight, that’s fine.” 

“They’re all booked, Mom. The flight was double-booked or something,” Finn says. “I’m gonna have to drive.”

“Oh no. That’ll take awhile, and you’ll need to be careful, but at least it’s not snowing,” Carole says after a pause. 

“I figured I’d get home, map out my route, and then go ahead and get on the road as soon as possible,” Finn says. 

“Drive safely, and text me when you’re leaving,” Carole says. 

“I will. Love you.”

“Love you too!”

Finn drives back to Lima, stopping for some breakfast along the way. Once he’s back at the house, he spends about fifteen minutes mapping out the drive to D.C., then he goes back out to the truck, where his bag is still in the passenger seat. He cranks the engine and backs out of the driveway. Before he can even start up the street towards the interstate, however, his truck starts making a grinding noise. The whole front end feels like it’s shaking, then a loud clunk comes from the engine, accompanied by a slightly sweet chemical smell that Finn recognizes as transmission fluid.

“No,” Finn says quietly to himself, then louder, “No. No, no, no, _no_! Come on!” He tries to force the truck into gear, but it clunks again and the truck comes to a shuddering stop. “Fuck!”

He grips the steering wheel tightly, banging his head against it. After a few minutes of sitting there smelling transmission fluid and feeling sorry for himself, Finn calls a tow truck to take the truck to Burt’s garage, then walks back towards the house, his bag over his shoulder. He dials his mom again.

“Are you leaving Lima now?” Carole asks when she answers. 

Finn sighs. “My transmission just died, Mom.”

“Are you—oh, I suppose you’d know, wouldn’t you?” Carole says, sounding dismayed. “Oh, sweetie. I’m so sorry.” 

“I’m having them tow it to the shop, but there’s no way I’ll get the part in before Christmas. I think I’m stuck in Lima,” Finn says. “Sorry I’m messing up Christmas.”

“ _You_ aren’t! I’m just sorry you’ll be alone in Lima. I’m going to head out to the post office right now and ship some of your gifts overnight at least, so you’ll have something to open Christmas morning.” 

“Thanks, Mom. Tell Burt I’m sorry, okay?”

“I will, and I’m sure he’ll email you or call if he thinks of anything else that can be done for your truck,” Carole says. “I know it sounds hollow now, but Merry Christmas, Finn.” 

“Yeah, Merry Christmas,” Finn says, then ends the call. “Merry freaking Christmas.”

Back at the house, Finn unpacks his bags, taking the wrapped gifts into the dining room and dropping them onto the table. With Carole and Burt both in D.C., they don’t have a Christmas tree in the house or any real decorations. The house looks like any other day, apart from three presents stacked in the middle of the table. Everyone else Finn knows is with their families, even Puck, who was planning to spend the time with Jake and Effie. 

“Merry freaking Christmas,” Finn says again, sighing loudly as he looks around the empty house. He spends the rest of December 23rd watching the marathon of _A Christmas Story_ and eating two whole packages of Oreos with milk. When he’s out of Oreos, he goes to bed, because at least he’ll have some presents to open tomorrow, whenever the ones from his mom arrive.

The next morning, Finn wakes up halfway-expecting the previous day to have been some kind of weird Christmas nightmare. Instead, the house is still empty, there’s still no tree, and he’s still completely alone on Christmas Eve. He tries to remember what it is that Puck, his mom, and Effie always did on Christmas, since they don’t celebrate it, but all he can come up with is ordering Chinese food and watching a movie, so that’s what he does. 

His food takes longer to arrive than he planned, and it isn’t until he’s paid the delivery guy and taken the food into the kitchen that he realizes they’ve brought him the wrong thing. Instead of beef, he’s got tofu, and instead of white rice, he’s got fried rice with some weird-looking stuff in it. He tries it anyway, but the first bite is so spicy that Finn feels his mouth starting to blister as he spits it out into the trash. He throws the rest of the food away and makes himself a sandwich, which he takes into the living room to eat while he watches _Bull Durham_ , one of his very favorite sports movies.

When Finn goes to get the DVD out of the case, however, he finds that it’s cracked almost all the way through on one side. The case looks fine, so whoever cracked it, they put it back into the case without saying anything. Finn sinks onto the sofa and flips through channels while he eats his sandwich. A couple of hours later, the doorbell rings, and Finn stands up, excited about the idea of presents at least, since everything has been kind of crap so far.

Finn opens the door to find the FedEx guy standing there, holding what looks like a mushed and mangled pile of wet cardboard and shreds of wrapping paper. “Uh, hello?” Finn says.

“Finn Hudson?” the FedEx guy asks. 

“Yeah, that’s me,” Finn says, already feeling resigned to whatever bad news the FedEx guy has to pile on top of Finn’s Christmas crap-heap.

“Sign here,” the FedEx guy says, presenting Finn with the electronic remote-looking thing. “Sorry about the damage.” 

“Yeah,” Finn sighs. He signs and takes the package from the FedEx guy, muttering “Merry Christmas” as he shuts the door. 

The box looks like it fell into the street and got run over several times in the slushy snow. The whole thing is sopping wet and dirty, mostly flattened, and whatever might have been inside obviously isn’t salvageable. Finn chucks the whole gross mess into the trash can on top of his uneaten Chinese food, then sits down in the middle of the kitchen floor, head in his hands.

“Why does everything suck so much?” he asks the empty kitchen. “Why do I have a Christmas curse?”

The kitchen doesn’t have an answer, so Finn stays in the floor for a while, feeling sorry for himself. He thinks about how Christmas used to be when it was just him and his mom, how they’d put the tree up the day after Thanksgiving and then spend the next few weeks doing Christmassy stuff like decorating the house with lights or baking Christmas cookies. He doesn’t have any lights, plus he’s been expressly forbidden to use Burt’s ladder after the gutter incident, but he’s pretty sure they _do_ have all the ingredients for Carole’s Christmas cookies. 

He sends a quick text to her: _Can u send recipe 4 xmas cookies?_

 _I’ll email it in 5-10_ Carole sends back quickly. 

Finn texts back some hearts and smiley-faces, then starts pulling out ingredients he thinks the cookies probably contain, like flour and sugar and eggs. When Carole’s text comes back, he adds butter and vanilla extract to the assortment of ingredients. He follows the recipe exactly and puts the finished dough—which looks and tastes right—into the fridge like the instructions say. Since it has to chill for a few hours, and since all he’s really had to eat was the sandwich, Finn decides he’ll run out to Chief’s to pick up some dinner and to get some eggnog to drink with his cookies.

Of course, as soon as he’s leaving the house, he realizes he’ll have to _walk_ to Chief’s, because his truck is busted. Instead, he walks the thirty minutes through the slush to the store. His shoes are wet by the time he gets there, but at least it wasn’t as cold out as it usually would be, so he isn’t frozen solid or anything. 

After grabbing a roast chicken and some mac ’n’ cheese from the deli section, Finn heads back to the dairy section to get some eggnog. The eggnog section is almost completely bare, with just one yellow Mayfield carton gleaming in the middle of the empty space. As he reaches for the carton, however, another hand lands on top of his.

“That’s my eggnog,” someone says with a slight slur. “I saw it first.” 

Finn looks to his left, where an obviously drunk man is weaving on his feet, his sweaty hand still on top of Finn’s on the eggnog. Normally, Finn would just let him take the eggnog. He’s an easygoing kind of guy, and eggnog isn’t worth getting upset about. Today, however, he has just had one too many shitty things happen in a row. He stares the drunk guy down and wraps his hand firmly around the handle of the carton.

“Well, my _hand_ was on it first,” Finn says. “That makes it _my_ eggnog.”

“Uh-uh,” the drunk guy insists, not moving his hand. 

“Uh, yeah,” Finn says, starting to pull the eggnog carton towards himself. 

The drunk guy’s hand finally moves, but a moment later it moves toward Finn again, this time as a fist that probably was aiming for Finn’s chin, but grazes the side of Finn’s face instead. Then he swings again, this time catching Finn in the eye. Finn lets go of the eggnog, and both he and the drunk guy go flying backwards, landing on their butts.

“Fuck!” Finn shouts, holding his eye. 

“Language,” the drunk guy says with a more pronounced slur. “Told you it was mine.” 

“Fine! Take the stupid eggnog!”

“It’s just eggnog,” the drunk guy says as he stands up, somehow managing to look disapprovingly at Finn. 

“You’re the one that punched me!” Finn says. 

The drunk guy shakes his head and picks up the eggnog, still shaking his head as he stumbles a little walking towards the checkout. Finn sits on the floor a little longer before getting up, grabbing a half gallon of chocolate milk, and walking towards the checkout as far away from the drunk guy as possible. 

The girl at the register gasps when she reaches for the chocolate milk. “What happened to your eye?” she asks Finn. 

“Christmas,” Finn says. “Christmas happened.”

She looks confused by that, but rings up the chicken and mac ’n’ cheese, too. “Have a Merry Christmas!” 

“Yeah, same,” Finn says. He walks back through the slush, swearing under his breath the whole way. As soon as he gets into the house, he kicks off his shoes and drops his food off in the kitchen before flopping onto the sofa. As soon as he’s horizontal, his eye starts to throb, so he gets back up to look at it in the bathroom mirror. His eye is puffy and already starting to turn purple. He sighs and goes back into the the kitchen to eat some of his chicken and mac ’n’ cheese. 

He’s already eaten half the chicken when his phone rings. He puts it to his ear. “Hello?”

“Finn,” Kurt’s voice says. “I heard you were stuck in Lima. How are you holding up?” 

“Oh my God, everything sucks so bad, like, you have no idea,” Finn says. “First my flight got messed up, and then my truck broke, and then my Chinese food was wrong, and a guy at the Chief’s pun—”

“Finn!” Kurt interrupts. “Where’s your Christmas spirit?” 

“But he punched me in the _eye_ , Kurt!”

Kurt huffs. “It’s Christmastime, Finn. Things cannot be that bad.” 

“In the eye, Kurt.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned since I moved to New York, it’s that how you _approach_ something makes all the difference! You could be stuck in an airport, or fighting with the person you’re dating, or working overnight at Lulu’s Diner!” 

Finn sighs.

“In fact,” Kurt continues, “Adam and I had a chance to go see some TEDtalks last month, and one of them was about how our attitude and motivation impact our circumstances. You can’t look at this situation as being stuck in Lima. You _get_ to spend Christmas in Lima!” 

Finn sighs again.

“Adam and I had a horrible fight earlier in the week, in fact,” Kurt says. “But then I stopped and thought to myself that I _have_ a boyfriend to fight about Christmas dishes with! You should look at this situation the same way. You have a hometown to stay in.” 

Finn sighs again, this time with additional self-pity.

“You have a truck to break down, and the skills to fix it. You have presents from Dad and your mom to open, too!” 

Finn sighs one more time, this time with an eye-roll. “They got run over,” he says. “I got smushed presents.”

“You have people who love you enough to overnight presents,” Kurt insists. 

“A black eye, Kurt! On Christmas!”

“It’s Christmas Eve, Finn!” 

“Oh my God, Kurt!” Finn yells. “I’m all alone, and my truck exploded, and I have a black eye, and no presents, and I’m _all alone_ , and this is just the worst Christmas ever!”

Kurt huffs angrily. “Well, if you’re going to be ungrateful and rude, I don’t know why I bothered to call!” 

“Me either!” Finn says. “I don’t know why I bothered to answer!”

“Merry Christmas!” Kurt says snippily, then hangs up. 

“Goddammit!” Finn says. “I hate this Christmas!”

After sitting at the table with his chicken and mac ’n’ cheese feeling sorry for himself a little longer, Finn gets up and puts away the leftover, then takes out his chilled dough. Rolling out the dough and slicing it up makes him feel better, and by the time he has both trays of them in the oven, he’s actually starting to cheer up. While the cookies bake, he decides he’ll decorate a little, so he gets the box of decorations down from the attic, hanging up his stocking and the garland on the mantle. He realizes he forgot to set the timer on the cookies at about the same time he starts smelling smoke. 

“No,” he says quietly, running into the kitchen. Smoke has started billowing out of the oven. “No! No! Not the cookies!” 

The smoke alarms all start going off, first in the kitchen, then the living room, then upstairs in the hall. Finn uses the closest hot pad to snatch the smoking trays out of the oven, dumping them in the sink, and burning the side of his hand in the process. He sinks to his knees in what should probably be dramatic slow-motion, but is really just pathetic normal-speed, shaking his fists at the ceiling and screaming his wordless frustration at the universe.

After a minute or two of screaming, Finn walks around the house and turns off the smoke alarms. He goes upstairs and runs a bath in his mom’s big garden tub, adding some of her lavender bubble bath. If he’s going to wallow in self-pity, he can at least do it in a garden tub. He notices the pink vinyl shower cap on the corner of the tub, and remembering how his mom used to put it on him for baths when he was little, Finn puts it on his head before getting into the bath.

Finn has been in the bubble bath for maybe ten minutes when he starts hearing banging on the front door. Since there’s nobody in Lima who would be coming by, he doesn’t bother getting out of the tub. The banging continues, though, and he thinks he hears voices briefly. The next thing he knows, the bathroom door flies open, with a cop, two EMTs, and a fireman standing in the doorway.

“Holy— _what_ is _happening_?” Finn yells.

“We received a call about smoke and some kind of attack,” the cop says. “Is everything okay here, sir?” 

“I’m just taking a _bath_!” Finn says. 

“Can you tell me the source of the smoke?” the fireman asks. 

“I burned my cookies.”

“Are you the only occupant of the house?” the cop asks. “The 911 call specifically mentioned that it sounded like someone was being attacked.” He stops and looks at something. “Sorry, screaming. It mentioned screaming.” 

“That was me,” Finn says. “Can you, like, _leave_? I’m kinda naked in here!”

“We’ll check the other rooms,” the cop says. 

“Do you need to be evaluated for burns?” one of the EMTs asks. 

“No, I just want people to not stare at me while I’m in the tub!”

“We’ll check back with you before we leave,” the fireman says, already turning towards the hall again.

Finn sinks lower into the bubbles, snatching the pink shower cap off his head and throwing it onto the floor beside the tub. The cop walks away from the bathroom door in one direction and the fireman walks in the other, and after a couple of minutes, they all reconvene in front of the bathroom door again.

“Everything checks out, and there are no flames,” the fireman says, and the cop nods. 

“We’ll be leaving, if you’d like to lock your front door in a few minutes,” he says. 

“Yes, fine, thank you,” Finn says. “Merry Christmas. Please go now, okay?”

“Merry Christmas, sir,” the cop says. 

“Everything is the worst,” Finn says to himself, then sinks all the way under the bubbles.  
Once all his fingers and toes have gone pruney and the water is only lukewarm, Finn gets out of the bath. He puts on his most comfortable sweatpants and sweatshirt, a thick pair of socks, and goes downstairs to sit alone on the sofa in the quickly-darkening room. 

“Everything is the worst,” Finn says again. “This is the worst Christmas ever.”

After a while of sitting in the dark, Finn nods off. When he wakes up, Puck is sitting beside him, one hand on the side of Finn’s head like he had to encourage Finn to put his head on Puck’s shoulder. 

“Hey,” Finn says. “You’re here.”

“Hey. Thought maybe you needed a little cheering up, or at least some company,” Puck says. 

“Yeah,” Finn says, sitting up again. “How’d you know? Did you get Spidey-sense or something?”

“That’d be pretty cool, wouldn’t it?” Puck says, and his hand falls from the side of Finn’s head onto Finn’s shoulder. “Not exactly, but when I called Rachel to wish her happy December twenty-fourth, she mentioned something about Kurt fighting with you on the phone, and I sort of pieced it together from there.” 

“Didn’t you have stuff planned? With Jake and Effie?”

Puck shrugs. “They understood. I mean, family’s family, right? You don’t leave ’em hanging.” 

“Yeah, but that’s why you should be with them,” Finn says. “You don’t have to ditch them for me.”

“You’re obtuse, aren’t you?” Puck says with a short laugh. 

“Hey! I got in really good shape this year!”

“Oh my God, Finn,” Puck says, shaking his head. 

Finn grins at Puck. “I’m just kidding. I know what ‘obtuse’ means.”

“Good,” Puck says. “But you were still being it.” 

“Yeah, yeah. It’s just been a really bad couple of days, you know?” Finn says. “I’m really glad you’re here, though.”

“Neither one of us looks much like Santa, but how about dinner tomorrow and _American Hustle_?” Puck asks. 

“That sounds good,” Finn says. “You want to stay tonight? We can watch a DVD or something.”

“Good thing you offered, since I was planning to stay.” Puck laughs and knocks his shoulder against Finn’s. “That would have been awkward.” 

“Yeah, ’cause the whole last two days haven’t been awkward at all,” Finn says. 

“Totally different kind of awkward,” Puck says. “I figured we’d grab some food, head up to your room and hole up. Sound good?” 

“Yeah. I’d offer you cookies, but I burned them,” Finn says. “Firemen came. Cops, too.”

Puck winces. “Yeah, I picked the right definition of family,” he says, almost to himself, then stands and offers Finn a hand. Finn takes it and lets Puck pull him onto his feet.

“Well, I appreciate it. I kinda need some family right now.”

Puck doesn’t say anything else as they go through the kitchen and get a few snacks or as they go up to Finn’s room, but he doesn’t let go of Finn’s hand, either. “Even this kind of family?” he asks after they’re sitting on Finn’s bed. 

“Yeah. I’m glad you’re here,” Finn says. “I’d rather have you than anybody else right now.”

“Be careful what you say,” Puck teases, putting his head on Finn’s shoulder. “You won’t be able to get rid of me.” 

Finn smiles. “If I got rid of you, I’d really be all by myself. Anyway, I’m bad at ordering Chinese food on Christmas Eve, and you’re really good at it.”

“I’ll make a deal with you. If you agree, I promise to order you Chinese food on Christmas Eve,” Puck says. 

“Okay. Sure.”

“You might want to find out what I want in return, first,” Puck says. “I mean, I guess you trust me and all, but still, don’t be _too_ trusting.” 

“Okay,” Finn says a little more hesitantly. “What is it you want?”

“I could be super-cliché and say ‘you’,” Puck starts, “but I won’t.” He lifts his head and turns towards Finn enough to kiss him very lightly. “I also was going to wait until New Year’s Eve, not Christmas Eve, but then when I found out you were still here…” 

Finn blinks in surprise. “Oh! You mean you wanna— like, you and me?”

“You know we’re good together.” 

“Well, yeah, but… I didn’t know you felt like that,” Finn says. “Is it new?”

Puck looks a little sheepish and shakes his head. “Think about it,” he says. “Years back, even.” 

“Fifth grade,” Finn says.

“That was fast,” Puck says as he nods. 

Finn shrugs. “Hey, I was the one who thought you meant the crush was on me, remember? You’re the one that said you didn’t mean _me_ -me.”

“You weren’t wrong. You just had a weird look on your face and I got scared,” Puck says. 

“It wasn’t a _bad_ look! I was just surprised!”

“Fifth-grade relationships generally don’t last through middle school, though, so maybe that was better,” Puck says wryly. “What do you think about my deal now?” 

“I don’t know,” Finn says. “I think it sounds kinda good.”

Puck grins and kisses Finn again, not quite as lightly. “Awesome.” 

“Yeah,” Finn says. “This is the best thing that’s happened to me all Christmas break.”

“I’m going to go for ‘best thing all year’ by a week from now,” Puck says. “Happy December 24th.” 

Finn leans in and kisses Puck, definitely not lightly. They kiss for a while before Finn pulls away and asks, “So, can I tell you about my last two days? ’Cause they were _really_ bad and this was almost the worst Christmas ever.”

“Absolutely.” Puck pauses. “That sounds like a movie. Can I write the screenplay?”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9pbIy2lqNk).


End file.
